Going to the source for handbasket saying

By Jim Willard

Posted:
11/29/2012 08:48:19 PM MST

The Vice President was adamant, we can't ignore a request from our readers. So, when one of our dinner guests last night said, "Jim, the women in my tennis group said to ask you about 'going to Hell in a handbasket.'"

My first response was to do a quick personal check, but I seemed to be no worse for wear than usual. Therefore, I assumed (correctly) that they were curious about the origin of the expression and I set out to research it.

Finding the meaning was relatively easy -- it means to deteriorate rapidly. Now the difficult part.

One of my valued references states that the expression is an Americanism from the early 20th century that owes its appeal to alliteration. That author suggests that a handbasket is light and easily conveyed so the phrase can mean going to ruin rapidly and easily.

So far, so good, until I discovered that a window in a church in Gloucestershire, England shows the Day of Judgment in stained glass. The window (installed before 1517 A.D.) portrays an old woman in a wheelbarrow being pushed to her doom by a blue devil (not a Duke basketball player) thus the idea of "going to Hell in a handcart" (the Brits term for wheelbarrow) could be more than five centuries old.

Another possibility is that little baskets -- that were carried by hand -- were used to collect the heads from decapitations and so "going to Hell in a handbasket" became more literal than figurative.

Yet another (unconfirmed) source suggest that in Charlemagne's day the hands of enemy soldiers were cut off and used as a kind of body count. To placate some defeated fiefdoms and to allow bodies to be buried entire, Charlie would send the sword hands back in little baskets (a nice touch but matching might have been difficult) leading to, again "Hell in a handbasket."

This is probably more gruesome detail than the tennis ladies would have desired, however, if nothing else we want to be thorough.

If we just accept that the phrase is an early 20th century Americanism then its continued appearance makes sense.

Here are examples: a 1988 "Star Trek" comic book had as its title, "Hell in a Handbasket," "Hell in a Handbasket" was the title of a 2011 Meat Loaf album, "To Hell in a Handbasket" was the name of H. Allen Smith's 1962 autobiography, and finally Helena Handbasket was a character in the TV show "Friends."

In order to avoid making this a self-fulfilling prophecy of quickly taking a turn for the worse, the VP and I are going to lunch.

The first people to keep written records were probably the ancient Babylonians. Clay books documenting land sales and business agreements have been found -- dated at more than 5,000 years ago.

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, didn't write all those fairy tales ascribed to them. They were simply highly regarded language scholars who collected and recorded the tales in the early 1800s. They saved the oral stories from being lost.

TV has for years attempted to draw in the little kiddos. The first cartoon created specifically for television was "Crusader rabbit" in 1948.

Jim Willard, a Loveland resident since 1967, retired from Hewlett-Packard after 33 years to focus on less trivial things. He calls Twoey, his bichon frisé-Maltese dog, vice president of research for his column.